A New Sea Level Rise Data Point: Not Too Serious

Fort Jefferson in the Dry Tortugas of Florida has an ocean-fed moat that surrounds the large fortress constructed from 1846 to 1875 and never finished. At the single entrance to the fort on its Southern side is an entrance surrounded by a border of marble. Around this border is a brick facade. Sea level height and changes can be measured by the number of bricks above the ocean water line beneath the marble border at the bottom of the entrance.

At 2:30 p.m. February 2, 2013, seven bricks were exposed beneath the fort entrance. These bricks appeared dry and this gave reason to believe the observation was made at high tide. Checking tide data for the Dry Tortugas confirmed 2:20 p.m. was high tide for February 2, 2013.

Checking books in the Fort Jefferson bookstore produced a picture of the fort entrance taken in January 1937. This picture showed all dry bricks above the water line and indicated about 7 and 3/4 bricks were above the water line. A brick and one layer of mortar has a height of about 85 mm and it was estimated the change in Gulf of Mexico water level for the 75-year period was 75 mm. This indicates an annual change in water level at Fort Jefferson of 1 mm per year.

It may be argued the 1937 picture was not been taken at high tide. If this is true, then the change in sea level would have been less than 1 mm per year. It may be argued the fort is sinking due to its extreme weight. If this is occurring, the sea level rise would be smaller than 1 mm per year.

The National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Association (NOAA) has a map of the world showing sea level changes at hundreds of locations around the world.

The closet NOAA sea level change data near Fort Jefferson is for Key West, Florida and Cabo San Antonio, Cuba. Both locations are about 70 miles from Fort Jefferson. For the period 1913-2012, Key West has a sea level rise of 2.24 mm per year. For the period 1971-2009, Cabo San Antonio has a sea level rise of 3.30 mm per year.

Sea level rises in both locations reported by NOAA data are considerably greater than rough measurements made at Fort Jefferson. It is left for NOAA to explain this discrepancy on sea level rise for locations so close to each other.

While staying in Fort Lauderdale, I observed an Egret traversing a complicated parking lot in a shopping mall. The Egret wanted to cross a traffic circle and watched car traffic and waited until there was a break in the traffic. The Egret apparently understood by observation, cars were not going to give the right-of-way to birds. Birds posed no threat to these enormous cars. The Egret successfully maneuvered to the other side of the traffic circle.

This observation counters complaints of global warming alarmists that increasing global temperatures will cause extinction of the earth’s species because they don’t allow for adaptation. Species adapt to change as shown by experience over billions of years.

Climate alarmists don’t allow for adaptation. They think the human species is incapable of deducing you could open an umbrella to shield oneself from rainfall. If you carry umbrellas; it functions the same as sticks.

Climate change is inevitable by definition. It is arrogant for humans to believe they can change nature. Skeptics observe their surroundings and make judgments based on these observations. Unfortunately, climate alarmists insist on placing bags over their heads so they fail to make observations contrary to their beliefs. Skeptics should continually observe their surroundings and report events that support no big catastrophes for the planet.

James H. Rust is a policy advisor for The Heartland Institute, a retired professor of nuclear engineering, and an outspoken critic of unnecessary alarmism over man-made global warming. He funds several scholarships for students majoring in chemical engineering at Purdue University. He currently is delivering a talk titled “America's Failed Energy Policies and The Reason Why.”

I invite you to read my book, High Tide On Main Street: Rising Sea Level and the Coming Coastal Crisis, so that we might talk knowing the same fact base. In the meantime, I would say that your observations above seem to ignore the ice age pattern of the last several million years, and how the current melting of ice has dramatically departed from that natural pattern. We have had six thousand years of stable sea level and shoreline. That is rather an “intermission” in the grander scheme of things. That is geologic fact. Just as real as the ice ages, is the correlation of sea level, average global temperature, and co2 levels. Looking at the Dry Tortugas history will not give you that insight. There are natural cycles. We have now altered them. The geologic facts are quite clear for those that want to follow your guidance to “observe their surroundings….” Unfortunately a careful reading of that geologic records shows that the shoreline and sea level are now on the move, in a rather unnatural path. The future holds catastrophes, and perhaps some opportunities. We need to look in the right places to find those events without prejudice.

ncdave4life

Actually, a careful examination of sea-level records shows just the opposite: despite all our GHG emissions, the globally averaged rate of sea level rise hasn’t increased in 80+ years, and has not increased at all in response to anthropogenic GHG emissions. Moreover, examination of U.S. Coastal Survey records from the 1800s and earlier shows little difference from current shorelines.

http://www.facebook.com/jack.wolf.7106 Jack Wolf

I need to point out that many of these statements are grossly misleading. Rush has cherry picked data and his scientific procedure here is most questionable. In
addition, his position that we can adapt totally negates our biological limits
as well as those of all God’s creatures.

At this point, there is no debate among scientists that climate change is
happening and sea levels are indeed rising. Of the 14,000 journal papers
published on climate change, only 14 dissented. That should give you pause.

Readers should check out the National Academy of Science, NASA, the American
Meteorological Society, the Soil Science Society of America, the USDA, the Met
in the UK, etc rather than the Heartland Institute with its fossil fuel ties.

Your car exhaust, industrial plants and other emissions don’t just magically
disappear. Your emperor isn’t wearing any clothes, and it’s embarrassing to
watch the shrinking percentage of people that deny reality and accept the garbage opinions contained on this web page.

And here you can find real data about sea-level rise, including links to dozens of papers which show that the (minuscule) rate of sea-level rise has not increased at all in response to human greenhouse gas emissions:http://sealevel.info/

http://twitter.com/johnenglander John Englander

You need to know a lot more geology before coming to a conclusion about waterlines in one location such as Fort Jefferson. For example there are sharks teeth all over Kansas, now about 1200 feet above current sea level. There are even marine sediments atop Mt. Everest. But the ocean was never at those heights. You need to understand uplift and subsidence before drawing such inferences. Sea level moves up and down with the ice ages about every hundred thousand years, a pattern triggered by the Milankovitch cycles. We have now departed from that pattern that has persisted for several million years.

http://www.facebook.com/people/Bill-Price/1774959747 Bill Price

This points out exactly the problem with NOAA misinformation , when compared to Real World observations.

This may be the reason the North Carolina CRC Science Panel has declined to answer the questions presented by the Land Alliance to the CRC Feb, 2011, about The US Coast Survey historical records from the 1850’s .

Subsequently, the Coastal Studies Institute (Mantio, NC ) , was asked if any study of the historical data had been done, and, if not, would they do such study.
No study was acknowledged, and they declined to do the study.
(Shortly thereafter, they did invite Dr. Ramsdorf ( self styled ” World’s leading promoter of SLR”), to a ASLR promotion strategy meeting . )

Now , admittedly, Mr. Rust’s observations are not based on an in depth analysis of the historical record; however, there is, in fact, a very detailed and specific historical record available, but, so far, none of the scientists will study it. They will however, accept tens of millions of dollars in NOAA grants to prove that ASLR will occur in the future.

Bill Price

ncdave4life

That 1 mm/year rate of sea-level rise (SLR) is almost exactly equal to the 1.1 mm/year median rate of sea-level rise from 159 NOAA-selected GLOSS Long Term Trend tide gauges from around the world, which is almost exactly equal to the 1.1 mm/year geographically-averaged rate of SLR from all 159 gauges.

However, I don’t think it is suspicious that the Fort Jefferson, Key West, and Cuban rates of SLR vary by more than 1 mm/year. Fort Jefferson and Key West are about 70 miles apart, and it is common for SLR at gauges at that distance to vary that much. In fact, the rates of SLR at gauges which are 500 miles apart are no better correlated than gauges halfway around the world.

Here’s a paper which discusses SLR at New York City:http://tinyurl.com/nhazburt1
Note that the rates of SLR at The Battery and Kings Point, which are just 20 miles apart, differ by 0.42 mm/year.

Whether the exact rate of SLR at any location is 1 mm/year or 2 mm/year is not very important: those rates are so slow that they cannot much affect either mankind or coastal ecology. What is important to know is that, despite ~ 3/4 century of major emissions of CO2 and other GHGs, the rate of SLR has not increased.

This argument fails to account for the natural rise and fall of sea level due to so called “lunar tides”, etc.. Living in Miami Beach, high tide marks vary widely throughout the year. Sometimes we have massive street flooding during high tide, like today, and other times the streets are dry. You cannot say that January 1937 is directly comparable to February 2013. However, those of us who live here, especially old-timers, can say that flooding is getting worse, and that it is worse than it was 10 years ago, and certainly worse than 70 years ago.